The farm we worked on in Wairoa Valley ended up being our very last farm. The valley was another gorgeous area in New Zealand! It was at the top of the south island near Nelson. The farm was surrounded by gorgeous hills and had the coolest river running along the one side. It was a cute little orchard-type of farm with a few sheep and some very loud cows. We cleaned a bunch of windows, did a bit of weeding and harvesting in her carrot and strawberry patches, picked some apples, and even wrangled a couple cows! Our host, Judith, was the cutest little older lady with a lot of spunk. I’m pretty sure she could out-grub me any day! We ate tons of fresh fruits and veggies while we were there and baked and ate a lot of crumble at the request of our host. Our accommodation was a tiny little shack out on its own next to the cows. We loved having our own little place to hang out!
Our very first day there it poured and poured all day long. Judith’s farm backs onto a gorgeous river but because of all the rain the level increased significantly and it was brown and the current was so strong. We were pretty sad about that because it looked like such a nice river to swim in. So we spent the day cleaning windows and napping in our shack. We baked an apple rhubarb crumble that turned out to be so delicious!
The next day we picked way too many carrots and did a lot of weeding. During our time off we went for a walk down the road and did a bit of exploring. We found a cool bridge with a great view of the river, saw some buffalo (ya, I said buffalo!) on a farm, and got invited to a party by a random dude that was driving by! (Don’t worry, we don’t party with strangers 😉 ) At one point we felt like we were doing an obstacle course because we had to jump over/walk through a river and jump over some electric fence that had been lain across the road. We hung out with some goats and alpacas too! It was quite the walk!
The next day the water had finally gone down to a level that was low enough for us to go down and check it out. The rocks down there were so interesting and such crazy colours; all purples and greens and blues and reds, they kind of looked fake! The water was still rushing like crazy and there were tons (and I mean tons!) of sandflies so we didn’t stay down there too long!
Speaking of sandflies, these things were the worst ever! They’re tiny like gnats but man do they bite! You feel the little things sting you and then the bites get so itchy. These bites can out-itch mosquito bites any day! They would itch so much it would wake you up in the middle of the night and you would just be scratching and scratching at your ankles! (Thank goodness for After Bite!) Hence the ridiculous working outfits of long pants, long sleeves, sleeves tucked into your gloves, and our beautiful sandfly hats! And these were hot sunny days we were working in too! Needless to say, we really hate sandflies!
We took another couple of walks down the road and trips down to the river while we were there, but you couldn’t hang out anywhere long before the sandflies found you and attacked. One really hot day when the river was finally back to normal (and such a beautiful colour!) we were able to stick our feet in for a bit before the flies found us. The water was so cold it hurt (hence not a full out swim) but it cooled us down so well!
A couple of the cows had babies while we were there and they were so so cute! I didn’t get any great pictures of them because they were shy and their mothers were protective but oh man were they adorable! One of them was having trouble feeding and so we tried to move them away from the others so they could focus better. This was not an easy task! The calf didn’t want to walk (and didn’t like people) and the mother didn’t want to leave all her friends or for her baby to get hurt. It took maybe an hour to move them over a few paddocks but we eventually succeeded! We decided to name the calf Bambino (Bambi for short). She was so cute! Light brown with the biggest eyelashes! It took her until we left to start feeding well but we were glad they were finally healthy! We also had to move five sheep from one pen to another and man were they fast! I felt like a football player trying not to let Tom (the oldest one) run back into the first pen! It was quite hilarious!
One of our nights we had (a very late) dinner with Judith’s brother and his two WWOOFers from Brazil, Vinny and Belinda. It was actually the first time we were able to meet other WWOOFers and they were so fun! We laughed so much, comparing our countries’ traditional desserts and complaining about the sandflies. And both us made crumbles so we ate way too much crumble for dessert! It was such a great time!
And that was pretty much our week in Wairoa Valley! We had so much fun with noisy cows, fast sheep, too many carrots and our hilarious working outfits! Next we left the south island to hit up the north island one more time before the end of our trip.
A Couple of Runaways 